


In The Sight of God

by MercuryGray



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Biblical References, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Introspection, Kissing, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 06:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10211858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: At Belinda’s wedding, Emma is considering what makes a marriage.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/gifts).



Emma had attended weddings before, but never one like this. The last had been her cousin, Clara, who’d married a Henderson some several months before the war had broken out. The bride had worn white, after the fashion of Queen Victoria, with orange blossoms in her hair, and had six bridesmaids, plus two little girls to carry the train of her veil, and the groom had worn his uniform from West Point, resplendent in gray wool heavy with braid. There had been a ball with some two hundred people attending, and the gifts had been laid out in the parlor for everyone to see - the silver spoons and the candlesticks and the china that the bride would take to her new home. And the cake! Rich and decadent and covered in sugared flowers that had probably taken a week to prepare.   

She had thought, then, that her wedding should be the same - hundreds of guests and a white gown in which she could dance all evening, and a chaplet of orange blossoms to anchor her veil on. But now she knew a wedding needed only two things to make it holy - love, and joy. And the wedding in the contraband camp had possessed those two things in ample measure.

The brides had not worn white (or even their Sunday best, since many of them owned but one dress) and there had been no candlesticks to admire or cake to share. But there was love, so much love, in the air around them, and they were, to a woman, joyful. And that, Emma had decided, was how a wedding ought to be.

She stood back from the party, watching the dancing and trying (unsuccessfully) to suppress a yawn. (Clara’s wedding had possessed the benefit of a tallcase grandfather clock to imperiously announce the hour and remind guests that it was nearing midnight, but the only clock in the contraband camp was the one on Miss Jenkins’ desk with the broken spring, and it would chide no one.)

Another yawn came shortly after the first (embarrassments usually coming in pairs) and Emma was just covering her mouth again when she turned and came face to face with Henry.

“A little late for you to be out?” he asked, his smile completely betraying the censure he affected. She could not hide that she was glad to see him smiling again. It had been too long since she had seen him happy.

“I might say the same for you, Chaplain,” she shot back lightly. “I believe we both have work tomorrow.”

He had the good humor to smile at that, his expression turning thoughtful. “Would you…allow me the chance to walk you home? Since I rudely declined your offer for a walk down King Street the other day.”

She considered his smile a moment, surprised at the offer. “I’d like that.”

The night air was cool as they moved away from the dancing, joyful mass of the party, the only sounds those of a city at rest - an occasional wagon in the distance, the chirp of crickets and the diminishing sounds of the party. Alexandria was a different place at night - all the world having gone to bed, silence reigned, the only lights those shining from upper windows.

Frank had offered to walk with her, after Clara’s wedding - they’d gone down into the garden and strolled among the magnolias, which were just starting to bud, their customary fragrance and soft petals a distant dream. She’d been aware, then, that Frank had asked her to leave the party for the sole purpose of kissing her, and there had been something thrilling about breaking the rules this way.

Henry’s request had a different purpose in it, his desire for the solitude offered by a walk home not one of illicit pleasure but mutual contemplation - absolution, even. And she welcomed that. For too long the air between them had been stilted and formal, caught up in the aftermath of their disastrous kiss.

Well, that was unfair. It was not the kiss itself that had been disastrous. The kiss had actually been quite nice, but what had followed had blotted all that out. She had never been able to find the words to say what she meant to on the subject, and, even when being found, hadn’t been able to get Henry to listen. Was it wrong to offer a logical reason for such a terrible act as killing, or to try and reason through with him all the ways why this might be something God had asked of him, rather than the Devil?

Was it wrong to still desire him?

He seemed to think so. She’d watched him for weeks throw himself into the most menial tasks he could find, the scrubbing of floors, the washing of bedpans, tireless in his pursuit of penitence. She’d found his bible bookmarked at Psalm 22 - "But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” She moved the marker forward to Psalm 23 and prayed that she might find whatever still waters might restore his soul.

Let her be thought interfering, as she moved heaven and earth to try and reach him! Let him berate and rail against her and her intentions - let him hate her if he liked! All she asked was that something bear fruit, even if she could not taste it. 

She’d watched, invisible, from across the road as Henry had walked down to Miss Jenkins’s schoolroom, hat on his head and book in hand, every inch the man of God, to offer to officiate, and bit back a smile when Belinda nearly shrieked with joy and threw her arms around him in the kind of gratitude that goes beyond words. (She saw that embrace change him, reshaping his shoulders as if some care had gone away. Belinda’s hugs had done that for her more than once.) More women came, called by Belinda’s joyful shouts, and soon Henry was surrounded by this flock of women, each one either thanking him or praising his name before the Almighty or wondering aloud if he might join her to her beloved as well. He turned in this crowd, one tall, dark-coated figure in their midst, overwhelmed and amazed by this great tide of love and joy and faith.

And then he’d smiled, and Emma found tears in her eyes. Doubtless a close relation of the tears she’d found in her eye earlier this evening while she listened to him read the prayers that she’d heard read a dozen times before, in stately parlors and grand churches, somehow more sacred now, being read here, to this humble assembly. “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God…”

How handsome he had looked, in his best coat! How handsome he looked now, in the dim light of the street. His face was turning solemn and thoughtful again as they walked home, and the silence between them was…companionable – comfortable, even. Emma wished he would say something, but she did not want to burden this with words. For now silence, this silence, was enough. She would make it be enough.

The orderly on duty at the desk looked up sleepily as they came in the wide front door, his eyes dropping back down to his book when he saw it was only the chaplain and Miss Green. The stairs seemed an eternity, until finally they arrived at Emma’s door, Miss Phinney’s vacated room.

Finally Henry spoke. “I believe I owe you an apology, Miss Green. I was…abrupt with you, when you asked me to consider…doing this. I had much on my mind and in my haste to console myself I forgot that my duty to God lies in service to others, in whatever form that takes.  And you would not let me forget that.” He stopped, clearly in the midst of thinking through some great matter, his eyes fixed, very firmly, on the hat and bible in his hands. “You are not a weakness, Emma Green, nor a …derailment. You are… anything but. And…” He swallowed, and stepped a little closer, hopeful and contrite, finally meeting her gaze. “I should very much like to kiss you again.”

“I should very much like to be kissed,” Emma reassured him, closing the gap between them and pressing her lips gently to his, as if testing the waters.  No one interrupted. The heavens did not open nor did fire rain down, and no clock cried out. The bible fell from Henry’s hands with a soft thump, the hat soon joining it, his hands no longer strangers to her waist and her hands no longer unfamiliar with his waistcoat, unaware of passing time as, beneath them, the world slept on.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece before we learned that season 3 had been cancelled, but I think it helps me, at least, put two of my favorite characters into a slightly better place - a place I think they were heading, if the radiant mutual heart-eyes at the end of 2.6 were any indication.
> 
>  
> 
> As we all sniffle over a show snuffled out too soon and all the stories we didn't get to see, I couldn't help thinking about Vincent Starett's famous poem about Sherlock Holmes: "Here, though the world explode, these two survive/And it is always eighteen ninety-five." It will always be 1862; Jed will always be at Mary's bedside, Charlotte and Samuel will always be holding hands, hopeful in their future, Henry and Emma will be looking at each other with tentative affection. The barn burns and breaks, the family falls. The world explodes, but they all survive.


End file.
